


The Island

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Daisy And Her Huge Crush On Coulson, F/M, First Time, Framework, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension, cousyfest2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-12 07:46:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10485819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy has dinner with Coulson's parents.(Written for the Cousy Fest 2017 - prompt: "right where I belong")





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



**there**

This is very weird for her.

“This is very weird,” she tells Coulson.

They have hidden around the corner, the little space between the dining room and the hallway, while Coulson’s parents (it’s so weird to think about that) finish setting the table.

“We have to keep it up,” Coulson says. “If we act in a strange way Aida’s software might catch up with us.”

“I know but… they’re your parents.”

“They’re not real.”

“They were, to you,” Daisy argues.

“I wasn’t real, either,” he replies, in a louder whisper.

Daisy can’t begin to imagine how that must feel for him. Those fake memories tricking him into believing he’s lived a whole life inside this world. Years and years of memories dumped into his brain so he’ll buy the fantasy.

He’s had a few hours to process it, and he still seems fraught with the revelation. Daisy knows what it feels like to have someone look around in your brain and mess with it, but not exactly like this.

Coulson’s father approaches them (wow does it feel weird to be saying those words, even in her mind) and offers another beer. He’s studying Daisy with some amused intensity, like there are some questions he wants to pose. But she notices Coulson studying this man in front of him, with something more than curiosity. Daisy can see it in the tension in Coulson’s jaw, that he is feeling betrayed right now. Maybe it’s irrational, but this was his father, or was supposed to be. He probably wants to know him better.

“We’ll get them ourselves,” Daisy says, touching Coulson’s arm, in a way that is unusual enough to get his attention. He looks confused for a moment, then understands. His “mother” calls from the next room, asking them to check up on dinner, and Daisy feels Coulson relax a bit under her fingers, grateful for the break.

She takes notice of the surroundings as they walk towards the kitchen. The house is taken out of Coulson’s memories, no doubt, but given it a twist to make it seem he didn’t have to abandon it when he was a child. The kitchen is full of sophisticated and easy-to-use appliances, the kind a 50-year-old son would buy for his 70-year-old parents to make their lives easier, worrying that they are becoming to old to be on their own so much. She would admire the detail of it, if it weren’t all so… diabolical.

His parents seem lovely, of course. The kind of people who would raise the softer version of Coulson she met in this world. A version of Coulson that never learned how to question the status quo, so much that he found himself in a schoolroom teaching teenagers to fear Inhumans like Daisy. But that’s not real, she reminds herself. Coulson didn’t end up in that classroom because his father didn’t die when he was a kid, or because his mother didn’t have to support them on their own. It’s all a trick of the software. Coulson was in that classroom because Radcliffe and Aida put him there, not because of what did or didn’t happen in his past. Just like there is no real version of herself that would have ended up working for Hydra, there’s no real version of Coulson that would be okay with people like her being hunted down like animals. Sure, she doesn’t know that for sure 100%. But she has faith. People are more than their circumstances. She has to believe that. She has to believe that about herself, as well.

Still, it’s easy to forget they are not real. That nothing is. But these people - they don’t just feel real, they feel like… well, like _Coulson’s parents_. His mother has the same full, cheery face, and his father has the same ears. Though Coulson Senior (“Please call me John” he had told Daisy at the beginning of the evening and Daisy had nodded awkwardly, thinking “I saw the file, I read about your death”) has a most luxurious mane of silver hair (formerly sand blond, judging by all the pictures in the hallway) that she’s pretty sure Coulson must be envious of. She catches Coulson forcing himself to remember they are not real, forcing himself not to look at them in wonder or with fondness, or memorize the lines on their faces, those he never got the chance to see in the real world. It’s so sad.

They deflect that awkwardness for a while by staying in the kitchen a little longer than they probably should.

It’s better when they are alone. Like they are an island in an unreal world. There’s that at least.

Daisy, trying to be helpful and giving Coulson a moment, goes to the fridge for the beer. She opens them and they start drinking here.

They haven’t really talked about why she has come to have dinner with his parents. It’s just that once she found him, once he remembered who he was, she didn’t want to let go. They agreed they had to keep up appearances so that the Framework won’t notice anything is wrong (if it hasn’t already, but they’re alive, so here’s hoping). Then Coulson told her he was supposed to be having dinner at the family house that afternoon and that the software posing as his parents would definitely wonder about his absence. Daisy is not sure which one them suggested she came along, or if there was a suggestion in the first place or they just… moved together.

She thinks Coulson was relieved that she came with him. She thinks the idea of being on his own with fabricated people freaked him out. It freaks _her out_. Of course she has been surrounded by either devoted Hydra agents or Grant Ward Redux so far, not nice elderly people who insist on feeding you every Sunday afternoon. 

“That smells delicious,” Daisy says, gesturing towards the oven.

“It’s my mo- it’s Janice’s ham roast, she makes it every couple of weekends,” Coulson explains, then stops, looking out of place (not even his usual frown of confusion that Daisy knows well, something more naked), like he just remembered that is a lie, there have been no ham roast weekends for years, it’s all implanted. 

“Well, I can see where you get your mad cooking skills from,” Daisy gently adds.

“She’s not real,” Coulson replies, but it’s not angry like before. He sounds disappointed this time.

“No, but this is taken from your memories, your brain. At least part of it. Maybe you remember how nice it was when you mom cooked for you.”

He turns around, not answering, and checks the meat in the oven as he was asked.

“She didn’t have much time for it,” he says after a while. “I don’t remember if she was a good cook at all.”

“Mmm,” Daisy takes another sip from her beer.

She doesn’t point out that this detail would be useful too, to whoever is creating this world (Radcliffe and his robot? The unknowable intelligence of the Darkhold itself?). She herself knows about how your most intimate longings, even the ones you don’t realize you have, can be used against yourself, to push you or to anesthetize you.

“Do they know?” Coulson asks.

“What?”

“That they’re not real. Do they know they’re bits of computer software? The first robot didn’t know it was a robot. Maybe they don’t either. Maybe to them I’m just their son. But does it matter if they are just a program plugged into my mind?”

Daisy touches his arm, resting her hand on his wrist.

“I think that’s more philosophy than I’m equipped to answer,” she says. She moves her fingers closer to his fingers. “I just want to get you out of here alive.”

He nods, understanding it doesn’t make a difference.

“Let’s go back in,” she says, grabbing her beer and grabbing Coulson’s arm.

And despite his claims that they are not real it’s obvious being around his parents is affecting Coulson. It hurts to see, the longing in his face, the way he looks at them. Daisy remembers his file: he lost his father when he was nine, his mother on his first week of college (that’s when SHIELD swooped in and recruited him). So even though they have always been alive for his “character” in the Framework, it has actually been more than thirty years since Coulson last saw either of them.

Soon Daisy finds herself in front of a mountain of homemade food (the kind she used to dream about in the orphanage) and with a couple of smiling and confused faces watching her every move.

“Mom, Dad,” Coulson admonishes them for gawking at Daisy, and she can tell it’s painful to say the words out loud.

Daisy tries to hide behind the pile of ham and veggies, focusing on eating rather than how freaky the situation is.

“You need to excuse us, it’s not often that Phillip brings some girl home,” his mother says.

_Some girl._

_Some_

_girl._

Daisy and Coulson both say “It’s not like that” at the same time, although Daisy is pretty sure his sounds more high-ìtched and whiny.

“He’s helping me, helping the _organization_ ,” Daisy explains. “Our meeting run late and he was kind enough to invite me over, that’s all. He didn’t want me to starve.”

“A meeting on a Sunday?” John Coulson asks, looking doubtful.

Great, this is where Coulson gets it from, Daisy thinks to herself. That sharpness, that blowing holes in your story, Daisy has always admired that in Coulson. But this is a problem.

“Hydra’s work never stops,” she says, in a subtly authoritative voice, in a voice that sends chills down her own spine.

It seems to work. There’s a moment of charged silence but the Coulsons seem to get over it pretty quickly.

“You’ll have to excuse my husband, Miss Johnson,” Coulson’s mother is saying now. “He has a bit of the conspiracy theorist in him.”

Daisy smiles, turning her head to Coulson. He seems embarrassed.

“I just wanted to know what does a Hydra agent need a local high school teacher for?” his father goes on.

Coulson chokes a bit on his drink. “That’s… that’s classified.”

His parents exchange a look. It’s warm and familiar and playful and it makes Daisy’s heart ache for no specific reason.

“ _My own son_ ,” John exclaims. “Saying that to me.”

“It’s not his fault,” Daisy intervenes. “It really is top secret stuff. But I can assure, Mr and Mrs Coulson, your son’s help is vital.”

Coulson flashes her a warning smile from behind the wine glass, like saying “you’re overdoing it”.

The rest of the meal goes by without a hitch and Daisy finds herself thinking “this is nice” a couple of times. she’s never been in a situation like this one before. In the real world, she means. She was never the kind of “come meet my parents” person to guys. Not that this is what Coulson means, or why she came. But superficially, it looks like a nice meal with Coulson and his family. Enough to make her wish it was real.

If this were real, if this wasn’t an horrific construct set in motion to keep Coulson sedated, Daisy would want to ask his parents to share embarrassing childhood stories, she would ask to go upstairs and see his teenage bedroom (for some reason she imagines a mixture of punk rock pop posters and sports medals), she would want to tease him about how he and his mother have the same hand gestures. But this is not real.

“I have to drive Phil home,” she says, cutting the evening short. She still can’t get used to having to force herself to call him by his first name, because calling him _Coulson_ like she has done for years, would be suspicious.

Coulson’s mom kisses her cheek before they leave, which makes her freeze for a moment, and his dad pulls Coulson aside for a moment, saying something in a low voice, to his ear, something that makes Coulson’s eyebrows go up for a moment, before he shakes his head and says his good nights, following Daisy out of the house, his parents’ house, for what, if things go well, is the last time.

They drive back to the city in silence, both lost in thoughts, he guesses. 

“I know it’s a lot to take in,” she tells him. She had come into this world knowing it was a lie, and yet she finds herself overwhelmed by the feel of it, the smell of it, all the intricate details that could fool you. And maybe that is a kind of reality, and who’s to say that the world out there is more real. But Daisy doesn’t have the luxury of asking these questions. She has a mission.

Coulson doesn’t answer, but for the duration of the journey back, while she drives, he seems a little more at peace, a little more himself than he’s looked all day.

They stand in his front porch just as the light is beginning to disappear from the sky.

“Maybe you should stay with me tonight,” Coulson says.

God it is so tempting, she almost says yes on reflex. But this is not about feeling safe, or even being safe. She has to get them out, she has to go back and save them.

He has a nice house - very white picket fence-y, which is normally enough to put Daisy off, but she guesses it makes sense for Coulson, or the Coulson Radcliffe and the android want to have in this world. But with Coulson awake this house would be the closest thing to a home Daisy has in this world.

Too dangerous.

“No,” she tells him. His face falls slightly, and she gets why he wouldn’t want to be alone either. “We deviated from our script enough.”

“You’re not thinking about going back to your house, are you?” he asks, sounding like he has been worrying about it for a while.

“No, no way,” Daisy replies. She’d rather risk detection by the Framework than having to spend one more minute in Replica Ward’s company. “I’ll make up some excuse about following a lead for a case and check into some motel,” she explains. “We need to find the others.”

“I’ll go to Mack’s address after class,” Coulson says, looking unconvinced, like he suspects whatever Daisy did to retrieve his memories won’t work unless she’s there.

“Hey, better a high school teacher than a Hydra agent showing up at his door,” Daisy says.

“Maybe.”

They exchange a look. In this world they don’t know the others’ associations, their morals. In this world Coulson was teaching kids to fear people like Daisy.

They don’t know how to say goodbye, good night, how to be alone in this world again, after spending the whole day glued to each other. But she found him, she made him remember, and that has to count for something, so she grabs his shoulder and pulls him into a hug. Coulson reacts with a lot more intensity than she expected, as if he is scared once they break the embrace there’s only darkness and danger left.

 

**here**

She believes he is avoiding her, or maybe just keeping to himself in a general sense.

Everybody is a avoiding her, if they are being honest. They are alive, safe, and they won the battle, but Daisy took away some things when she went into the Framework to take them out. Fake things, but precious things nonetheless. They find it hard to look her in the eye.

She hates herself for it too, for taking things away from them. In a way she regrets it. She thinks about Coulson and years of Sunday meals with his parents. She’s talked it over with Mack. The idea is that all the pain and regret made you who you are, and you shouldn’t resent that. Daisy gets the idea, intellectually agrees with it, but she feels like - like it’s total bullshit; as much as she likes the person Coulson is, the person he wouldn’t be if his parents had been around longer, Daisy would give anything to give him a day more of happiness in his life, even if that meant he never became the person who met her, who believed in her, who helped her. Even if she were to lose him, it would be worth it. It’s irrational, but she can’t stop thinking about it. 

Daisy doesn’t know how to explain the feeling until one night, a week or so after the last battle of this particular war, when Coulson shows up at the door of her bunk late at night, in pajamas, and then Daisy knows how to explain it.

He looks like he knew she wouldn’t be asleep.

“Can’t sleep either, uh?” Daisy says, waving him inside.

He steps in, and stops, scanning the room with curious intensity. Daisy realizes he has never been inside her bunk, not this one, the one she’s used since she came back after half a year of absence.

“I’m sorry I don’t have chair in here,” she says, inviting him to sit on the bed.

She sits by his side and they don’t talk at first, and she lets him not talk, getting the same feeling she got inside the Framework: like they are somehow this island, and outside it’s darkness and bad stuff all around them but it’s okay because at least they are together. She thinks she has said this to Coulson before, trying to explain she was grateful for his company, or grateful for his general existence.

“I keep having this nightmare that I’m still there,” he says, bringing his hands together over his knees.

“Yeah, me too,” Daisy confesses. She keeps waking up confused as to where she is, her thoughts all jumbled, now that she off the meds they gave her for the gunshot wounds, the ones that gave her dreamless nights.

“That the fantasy just go more sophisticated, smarter,” he adds, touching the spot where his prosthetic arm meets real flesh to make the point. “That they’ve wised up and of course they’d set up an scenario where you come for me and save me.”

“And we can’t know it’s not real until it kills us,” she says. “How do you shake that feeling?”

“I don’t know.”

They stay in silence again, side by side at the edge of her narrow bed, their bodies touching at the edges too.

Then suddenly Coulson chuckles.

It’s not loud (she can’t imagine Coulson chuckles very loudly, can she? and that’s a bit sad, she thinks) but the bed trembles a little under the sound.

“What is it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on, Coulson.”

“That night we had dinner with my parents,” his voice trembling a bit on the word or maybe Daisy is imagining it, because she knows how much seeing them had affected him. “When my father took me aside after the meal, he asked me if you were my girlfriend.”

“He did?” Daisy chuckles too.

“He said you should be.”

“Oh,” she lets out, appreciatively, a bit flattered, of course.

But talking about Coulson’s father only reminds her that in this world he didn’t live long enough to talk to Coulson about girls and stuff. It hurts, inside some essential part of herself. It hurts that she can’t give him everything he needs, that she can’t make the world as perfect as he deserves. She just can save his life, everybody’s lives, over and over, and that’s not enough, that’s so little.

“What’s wrong?” her face is making Coulson ask.

She is not crying, but she might as well be, she feels that ache and tiredness around her eyes. She presses the inside of her wrist to her forehead. “It’s nothing,” she tells Coulson.

“Daisy…”

He has a special knack for making her talk just by saying her name. She has never been able to fully explain it, or resist it.

“I’m so sorry,” she tells him. It’s not like she would have done differently (she had to save him, get him out of there alive), but she’s still sorry.

“Why are you apologizing?” Coulson asks.

Daisy knows a thing or two about finding what she had always looked for only to lose it again.

“You have lost so much,” she says. “And it’s kind of my fault. I was the one…”

Coulson shifts on the bed, turning to one side so he can face her properly. Suddenly his hand is on her face, palm pressed against her cheek, and it’s a shock, she can’t remember the last time they touched so much in a world that wasn’t a fabrication.

“They weren’t real.”

“They were to you,” she argues. “They would have been…”

She trails off, the burning in her eyes threatening to materialize into actual tears and she hates crying in front of people, and she hates crying in front of Coulson because she knows how much he cares and she doesn’t like the idea of making him feel bad for her.

While she’s thinking all this, and struggling not to cry, Coulson has started kissing her. which of course it’s worse, because she tore him away from a perfect life and now he is doing something nice like kiss her.

Okay. Something _very_ nice. But still.

She grabs the collar of his shirt and pulls him away just a bit.

“You had a family,” Daisy says. “I took you from them.”

Coulson shakes his head, slowly brushing his lips against her mouth.

“You’re my family.”

He kisses her fully and they end up lying on the bed, Coulson gently on top of her as her mouth becomes more responsive, more active. His mouth is hot and she had forgotten that detail about kissing. Not that kissing Coulson could be comparable to anything she previously… Daisy can’t find the words, but Coulson is different, because he’s always been.

“I think my father was right,” he says between kisses. “You should be my girlfriend.”

His tone is light and charming and he is smiling at her, looking slightly disconcerted, like he has just found something that makes him happy.

Daisy moves her hands to his hair, pulling him down against her mouth once more. She’s never thought about Coulson like this (okay, maybe once or _twice_ at the very beginning - what? he was handsome and nice to her and he used to get all flirty, how could she not have wondered…) but she always knew he was the most important thing in her life, so kissing him while he moves over her on her bed is not really that shocking, if she puts it that way. 

“You are my family too,” she tells Coulson. She is a bit breathless, overwhelmed by the intensity of their kisses, the amazing feel of his weight on her body. She kisses him softly, just one kiss now, to punctuate her words. She shrugs a bit, like it’s a bit sad to tell the truth at this point, because Coulson is all she has, all that is somehow hers, and that’s not the sad part, the sad part is she thinks it’s too much.

He’s so close and his eyes look lighter, kind of blue, or bluer than Daisy thought they were.

“Now I really worry I might still be trapped in the Framework,” Coulson says after her kiss, his tone lighter. “Having me believe you could be interested in me like this…”

“Now _that’s_ corny,” she teases, nervous, not knowing what to do with his words, not daring to completely believe them, so she spills laughter on his mouth to cover up.

She runs her hands down his back, grabbing his ass and pulling him in like a teenager. Everything since they started kissing has felt so good, Daisy doesn’t see any reason to stop now, and judging by Coulson’s muffled moans at the back of his throat, he doesn’t want to wait either.

Okay, she comes up with one reason to stop for a moment.

“I don’t have any…” Daisy can’t decide, the word _condom_ sounding too crass to her right now, and the word _anticonceptive_ too formal, at risking of breaking the spell. Her hesitation seems to be enough for Coulson to get the general idea, though.

“I don’t have anything, either,” Coulson replies.

Daisy tilts her head, an idea. “Mack?”

“He’s not in the base tonight, and I don’t feel comfortable about us going through his things when he’s not here.”

She nods.

Another idea.

“The supplies closet?”

Coulson extricates himself from her arms and Daisy finds that, recent as the development of having Phil Coulson in her arms is, she misses it when he pulls away.

“I’ll go get them,” he tells her, sitting on the bed.

“You sure? I can go,” she says.

“No, let me take care of this,” he says and Daisy thinks it’s nice and Coulson-like, a small thing to make it easier for her.

“Great, be quick,” she commands with a little more enthusiasm than she meant. Not that she wants to keep it cool or make Coulson thinking she wants this less than she does; it’s just a reflex, being over-eager never did her any favors with guys.

He stops, shaking his head a bit.

“I might be too old for this,” he says with a little sigh.

Daisy fixes him a murderous stare.

“I just said I _might_ ,” Coulson corrects, bringing his fingers to her cheek and kissing her softly before fully getting up from the bed. 

He gives her an indescriptible look (because Daisy doesn’t want to try and figure out what it means, she just wants to enjoy how the look makes her feel) from the doorframe, one she is not likely to forget soon.

While he is gone she lies down on the mattress again, thinking she would have liked to know Coulson when he was younger. Not because she minds that he is older (though she’s never really been with someone older, she doesn’t know if that might be a problem, but with the kind of life and the kind of risks they lead Daisy can’t imagine it being an issue), but because she would like to know more about him, she would love to know him at every phase in his life, it’s just that thirst for information that had made her so curious in the make-believe world of his parents’ house, that thirst that has been there since she first met him over fours years ago. She can’t remember a time where she wasn’t curious about Coulson.

“Do you still want to do this?” he asks when he comes back. 

She nods and touches his back encouragingly (or she hopes). He starts undoing his shirt. Her own body is covered in recent bruises and Coulson winces at the sight, touching over the protective gauze still covering the spot where a robot copy of him shot her. Not that he wasn’t going to be careful, but seeing it makes him go more slowly.

“Nice,” she says when he’s naked, only half-joking, as she squeezes the muscles on his arm.

“I’ve been working out.”

“Is that a line?” she asks and feels overwhelmed by the desire to call him _Phil_. She guesses she could probably try it at this point.

“Yes, it’s a line. Truth is I haven’t been working out lately… only in a virtual simulation. I got my ass kicked.”

“Well, if you need a sparring partner… _for real_ , I might know someone.”

He smirks at her as reply. 

“I’d really like that,” he says. “I won’t be that easy to defeat this time.”

“Yeah right.”

He hugs and kisses her very quickly, in a moment of rush, like he has suddenly remembered he can. It’s really nice, so warm when he gets on top of her, his legs pressed against the inside of her thighs.

He is hairier than the guys she’s been with until now, and he is tickling her stomach in a really nice way.

She didn’t think she’d have this with anyone ever again - the sex itself has never been important to her (she’s normally too wound up to have an orgasm when she’s with someone else, so the release is normally lacking), but she likes feeling so connected to another person, so close.

He grabs her hips gently and turns them over, so that she is on top and can decide the moment she wants to start this and go at her own pace.

It’s easier this way, it feels better, and Daisy starts riding him, trying to take it as slow as she reminds herself to, enjoying the sounds Coulson makes when she moves. She moves her hands over his chest, careful not to touch his scar in case he doesn’t like that (she’ll ask next time, she’s not sure what it means but if he’s okay with it she’d like to touch him there), but twisting his chest hair between her fingers.

“Kiss me,” Coulson asks in a pleading tone. Begging, really.

He opens his mouth before she reacts, like he’s ready to receive her already. It’s a good look on him, the begging and the parted lips, while his hands are still holding on to her hips and he keeps thrusting up. It’s a good look all around and Daisy loves granting him the request, arching and bending over him. His mouth feels even hotter than before.

It’s not perfect but she loves it, feeling Coulson connected to her in a way he wasn’t before, for all the closeness they had shared, this is something new. She studies all the new information she is getting from this; the noises she has never heard him make, how he looks naked and aroused, his nipples hardening under her fingers like flowers bloom (okay, a little sappy but, he’s gorgeous to her), the smell of him, it’s all new and Daisy is fascinated by it.

Then he brings his hand between their bodies, rubbing her clit, getting her off before he comes, and it’s perfect.

Afterwards he leaves her alone again for a moment while he goes to the bathroom (it’s kind of cute how he tries to hide the fact that he’s going to dispose of the condom) and Daisy lies across the bed, spreading her arms and relaxing her back. This time she doesn’t think about anything, let alone anything profound, her mind a nice content blank, something she hadn’t felt in a long time, maybe not even since before Hive.

“Is there room in there for me?” 

She opens her eyes, Coulson standing over her, naked and looking very not-ashamed of his nakedness. 

“I’m sorry,” he says when Daisy doesn’t reply immediately. “If you want me to leave-”

“No, no,” she tells him, moving to one side to let him some room in the bed. “I want you to stay. Slide on in.”

Coulson gets in, but not bothering to throw the bedsheets over his body, no modesty at all, but he goes to her and suddenly it’s all almost normal couple cuddly stuff, even if they don’t look like a normal couple and their story definitely has not been normal. But right now it does feel a bit normal, and like Coulson would probably take her to go have dinner with his parents, if they were alive. Yeah, he would. He totally would.

“What was your teenage bedroom like?” she asks.

They are both look to the ceiling and Coulson turns his head instinctively and his nose brushes her hair. They just had sex, Daisy shouldn’t think this detail is sexy as much as she does.

“What?”

She turns on her stomach, so she can take a closer look at him; naked, post-coitum, his eyes still bluer than she had noticed, his lips pink, looking old and childish at the same time.

“I’m serious,” she says. “What did it look like? Your teenage bedroom.”

“Small,” he replies without thinking. “After my father died we moved into a flat.”

She brings her mouth to his arm - she’s too shy right now for a kiss, but she just wants to touch him in some comforting way. His lips curve a bit, between the slight private sadness of talking about his parents.

“What did it look like?”

“I had baseball and basketball stuff on the shelves,” he says and Daisy feels oddly vindicated. “And ticket stubs on the walls, magazine pictures of Iggy Pop and Lita Ford.”

Daisy smirks, satisfied with the answer.

“I’m still sorry,” she says. “That I took you away from your parents.”

At her words Coulson turns on his stomach as well, so they’re both with their chins resting on the pillow.

“You’re sorry you saved my life?”

“No but… I want to see you happy, you know,” she says, something she suspects it’s true with every person she gets involved, but in Coulson’s case the impulse was there long before she went to bed with him. That makes a difference, she thinks.

“I’m pretty happy right now,” he says, drawing his thumb along the line of her left eyebrow. Daisy doesn’t think this gesture belongs to anyone else, just him. “What was your teenage bedroom like?”

She smiles at the question.

“Oh I wasn’t nearly as cool as you,” Daisy replies. “It was all fake goth stuff. Marilyn Manson and Evanescence.”

She watches him wince at her confession and rolls her eyes. Coulson casually drops a kiss on her upper arm.

“I like this one.”

“What?”

“This room. Your room.”

Daisy looks around. “There’s not much in here,” she argues. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure how to go back to trusting something constant, after her months away from this place. She still had doubts about how SHIELD was running things, and she’s still not sure her presence around here is not going to cause disaster for everyone she cares.

Suddenly Coulson’s eyelashes brush her arm.

“Right now it has you in it,” he says, touching her prosthetic hand to the small of her back. “That’s enough.”

She get through her shyness, she bravely kisses a soft kiss against his cheek in gratitude. She can feel the wrinkles on his face as he smiles, they’re so close, she can hear his thoughts, which she had always wanted. She can hear his heart, not for the first time.

“I really hope this is not a fantasy,” Coulson says after staring at her for a moment, now pressing a smile to her shoulder, moving slowly over to her shoulder-blade.

Daisy could say the same, but she knows it’s not a fantasy. Her fantasies are not this good.


End file.
